I was at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, some years ago. It tells the horror and it tells it well. I've seen Schindler's List; in a sense, it portrays the horror more effectively than any documentary has. Both are missing a crucial element - the magnitude of Jewish response.
For this I look to two books in particular: "Responsa of the Holocaust" and "Hassidic Tales of the Holocaust".
"Responsa" records halachic questions Jews posed at the time: May one save his child for a selection if it is certain another child will replace him? May one deny her Jewishness to escape? If the forced labor begins before dawn and ends after nightfall when does one put on teffilin? There was one Jew in the Kovno Ghetto who could answer these questions. He had been pressed into the service as chronicler of the Nazi's library: the Germans amaseed books, community and family documents and Jewish articles for their planned "Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race" - Hitler's own Holocaust Museum.
The second book tells of one Bronia Koczicki who in the Bochnia Ghetto brought her two small sons to be blessed by the saintly Reb Aaron of Belz who was there at the time. He blessed them that "G-d will help". But Bronia would not leave. She asked that her little boys be blessed with "fine generations". He placed his hands on their heads and blessed them.
"The woman's lost her mind," people sighed. "Children are being killed in the streets every day and she's worried what type of grandchildren she will have?" Bronia didn't pay them any mind. "We will live through this war," she kept repeating to her children.
The first book tells of people who lived with G-d regardless of whether they saw G-d living with them. The second tells of a woman who saw that the future determines the present.
"He who plants in tears, with joy shall he harvest," declared the psalmist David. Not only as a reward, note the commentaries, but as a consequence. And move your comma, they add; He who plants in tears with joy: shall harvest. Tears because the world is cold, dark and cruel. Joy because everything is His plan and He has made me a part of it. Bronia's faith is awesome.
The third Temple is built and only waiting for us to allow it to descend, maintains our tradition. For the tzadikim, the rare righteous, the destruction and exile never took place. Bronia, either through learning or instinct, lived with this.
And so did those who questioned in the first book. So did those who davened Yom Kippur in the forests of Poland. And when we study and fulfill Torah then we do too - even if we don't know it yet. Somewhere, deep inside of us resonates a tzadik.
The sad days of The Three Weeks, the period we find ourselves in now, preceding Tisha B'Av, will become the most joyous. Not that the sadness will be obliterated: it will be the cause of the joy. Had we not mourned for two thousand years what would there have been to rejoice? Who from the ancient people would be left to rejoice? Paradoxiacally, our joy and sadness kept us us from becoming an ancient people: it ensured we would remain a timeless people. This joy and sadness were not opposites - they were extensions of G-d, of His eternity.
Children of the Holocaust indeed, a befitting memorial to the holy martyrs. May the All Merciful resurrect his Temple and us in time for this year's Tisha B'Av.